Note: Chapter One has been revised for clarity.
Chapter One:
She was saddened to hear of Draco Malfoy's death. She could not explain why those obituary words stuck in her throat as if she'd eaten a large wad of taffy without water. She felt slightly itchy and ready to choke. She rubbed at her stinging eyes with confusion. She and the boy had been embittered, school yard rivals; those years were not easily dismissed and yet she had knocked back tears for him.
She'd seen the news on the fourth page of the "serious" wizarding reporting newspaper-a new authentic title that was spooned onto all things nowadays. Everything required an identifying monocure to make it authentic now. So much so that reality itself was yet another package to be rewrapped and sold as the new, more real reality. Yet another consequence of a dark evil threatening society to extinction. Voldemort's influence could never truly die in the hearts of a post-war world.
Sins would always bleed into the soil and this time the thing that flowered was a need to prove that existence was a shared, agreed upon set of dictations. The post war world assurance that what was real for one wizard was real for them all. A collective belief...a collective understanding of the world that bars wizards from splintering into factions and camps that believe this truth over that truth over another. Now, the world as a whole was intent on believing one singular truth that everyone could agree on no matter the consequences. No matter that it killed the idea of the "individual". The collective was all that mattered now.
So, she did not question the "truth" of this backpage news story. It was salacious and full of gossip that hinted at a shocking cause of death, but she had no doubt of its core truth. He had died and, perhaps in the most unforgivable way for a beautiful young man to die, at his own thin hands. With so few virile young men to repopulate the desolate and devastated population, this was a death that even she could not forgive. There was one less man roaming the streets providing romance to a broken generation.
His death would have been the front page headline even one year prior but now it was relegated to the forgotten pages of the "authentic" news rags right behind the adverts peddling Mrs. Honeycutt's "Newly Improved and Absolutely NOT Combustible Wart Removal Potion". Hermione could almost imagine Malfoy's affronted face as he realized that his death was of so little importance that it was placed after such a hackneyed product and she found herself sniggering until she cried again. A couple looked at her oddly as they passed by her and she remembered she was sitting on a park bench looking very much like an utter loon. She dried her face and looked around. The world was still going on as if something monumental had not just happened. The indomitable Draco Malfoy was dead and no one seemed particularly off kilter about it. The world continued to spin as normal and she couldn't help but feel as though something had been irretrievably lost.
The world was too broken to care anymore. It was searching for meaning in mighty heroes and impossible feats of magical defiance. The media did not have the publishing budget to focus on the death of a has-been. The days of admiring the rich and famous had been strangled out in lieu of a culture clinging desperately to magical super men who could save the world with a swish of their electric wands. There was simply no use for glitz and glamour when the world was too busy sewing itself up into a super mass of collective idealism. And for that reason she wept. For the horrid days of the dark and the horrid days in this new light.
Still sitting on the park bench, Hermione stashed away the offending newspaper and pulled out her weekly planner in hopes of shaking off her melancholy. She reviewed her speaking engagements and scheduled appearances coming up in the next few days and could barely find a moment to even go to work. She had been in a listless swamp of banquets and interviews that all seemed to be laser focused on her insurmountable fame and her even more larger than life friends. She knew that all three of them were bombarded with requests, invitations, ribbon cuttings, endorsement deals and the like. Each member of the Trio handled it on their own messed up terms.
Ron, surprisingly, was the recluse. Harry had Ginny to pull him from the dark cupboard of his mind into the more acceptable darkness of merchandised selfhood. Harry could often be found skulking about at auction halls as the top prize for The Society of Orphaned Web-Winged Toad's Charity or some other such nonsense.
Sadly, Ron had only himself and a forgetful Hermione to push him through the glittering flashes of lonely fame. And, for her part, she could not be the backbone of the trio anymore; she couldn't be Ron's backbone anymore. Ron slipped and drowned under the world's crushing wave of adoration and Hermione was unsteady against its tide. Ron was unable to piece together a version of himself that wasn't muddled by hero-worship and unrealistic expectations; his search for meaning and identity was suffocated by the public's need for an unscarred hero. She was no better.
Hermione felt shaky and unable to make appropriate decisions anymore. It was too difficult to be intelligent for public display. It hurt too much to be the glue. Ginny attempted to take Hermione's mantle but was unable to understand Hermione's essential (and unspoken), primary function, was unable to hold the flaying group together. Hermione was the irreplaceable piece. At least in that Hermione was vindicated.
The trio still met religiously but their bond was a captain-less vessel left unanchored so that each member buffeted against the great sea with no strong leader to steer them back oncourse. And for that, Hermione was terribly anguished. Part of being on a leaderless ship entailed finding one's self in vast galley of unawareness and floating into oblivion. She hated that she could not be the leader her men needed. She hated that Draco Malfoy had most certainly felt as adrift as she did with no one to pull him back to safety. He was another lonely vessel left to float alone. Hermione felt somehow as responsible for his lack of guidance as she did with her own boys; if she were more "The Hermione Granger" that the world wanted her to be then none of this would have happened.
Hermione stashed her planner back in her bag and picked up the crumpled newspaper again. She told herself to leave it- leave him on the bench and go about her day but she couldn't. She turned to his page again to stare at his obituary photo. It was him sitting in what she assumed was his family's immense gardens. He was standing behind his mother as she sat primly on a garden chaise lounge. He was wearing a perfectly tailored set of summer dress robes and his face was set in a serious expression. He looked every bit the perfect English aristocrat but his hands told a different story. They clutched the back of his mother's chair like claws as if he were as light as air and could simply float away with the slightest provocation if he did not clamp himself to something tangible. Hermione wondered how many years he'd been clutching on to humanity before he finally let it go.
The church bells from Saint Maria's began ringing in the new hour and Hermione was broken from her reverie. It was almost 8 am and she was going to be late for work. She reached for her caffeinated tea and vacated the bench, heading for her job. She attempted throwing the newspaper in the rubbish bin near her bench but was unable to actually do it. She sighed as her hands trembled over the rubbish bin with the paper in hand. Hermione bit her lip before snatching up that page and ripping it out of the paper. She folded into the tiniest piece that she could before slipping it into her bag for safe keeping. He was more than a printed piece of paper but this was all she could do for him now. It was the least she could do to save him from the rubbish keep.
Satisfied with her decision, she threw the rest of the paper away and hurried as quickly as her sensible shoes could carry her. She refused to apparate or use some other magical convenience to make up time. She straddled a life on the edges of society. She remained a full witch but spent much of her time commuting to a small muggle village where she relished in old books and manuscripts. She was fully aware that she was wasting away her intelligence and it hurt her deeply and yet she was too unhappy to excel further. She could not wrestle up the resolve to do more, be more. That perseverance had been strangled out of her at 18 when she saw what the world really was.
…...
She did not go to the Burrow anymore as a point of contention despite constant pleas and veiled threats. She could not participate in a happy mirage while her parents fell into oblivion. She knew she should not and yet she could not stop herself. She spied on them obsessively with a crackling cauldron in her small flat on the east end. They were unhappy. They could not remember their daughter or their respective siblings, cousins and college mates. And yet, they were not complete. Despite the unnamed or unremembered lives that had been spirited away from them, their spirits knew of loss. They could not be truly happy together but without other relatives to rely on, they could not be apart.
She watched them yell at each other, unhinged and unsure, never knowing what missing pieces were haunting their lost souls. They could not get close to each other and yet they could not walk away. They pushed and pulled and tried to rebuild lives they did not remember. They argued about eating sweets without knowing why, they complained about the British royals and parliamentary politics with such emotion that it frightened them. They weren't actually British so why did they care, they'd seem to say silently to themselves. Those confused glances and far away looks crushed Hermione. She watched them scream together and fumble apart. She often slapped the cauldron to the ground. Watching the cackling brown liquid coat her floorboards. She did not sleep anymore.
She soon realized that with no parents and no Weasleys, her life was rather small. She often found herself staring at the walls without any true knowledge of the passage of time. Hermione had been in a daze for several years now. She sometimes heard a woman screaming in the darkness as she lay awake at night. She always shuddered when she recognized the voice as her own.
And just like that, a miracle or curse depending on the perspective, slammed into her life and changed everything. A missive of all things woke her from her sticky stupor. An invitation to meet a beseeching acquaintance. Daphne Greengrass-Goyle wanted her to come to tea. "What the fresh hell?" Hermione thought as the small, decadent invitation floated in her hands as the carrier owl feverishly flew away from her.
The invitation requested her presence on Sunday at midday. She hated the vague sense of casual formality. Why not be frank and say noon or one o'clock? Midday seemed like an inside joke for the fabulously wealthy who intrinsically knew when to show up somewhere and when to depart. She, not being of that class, was unsure of what time midday could mean to such people and she was annoyed that she wasn't sure. She found it odd that she was more annoyed by their casual timeliness than the invitation itself.
She knew that she should not bother to attend. But her curiosity had not been peaked like this in so long. If she were honest with herself, she'd admit a tiny thrill about the invitation. It was a chance to break up the monotony eating away at her days. She only broke up her routine for weddings and funerals and the overabundance of pregnancy celebrations. Those were all things that happened to other people and she was always on the smiling periphery- celebratory but aloof and adrift.
The short note was specifically crafted to ensure that Hermione would be too interested to decline a meeting. And it read as follows:
"A good morning to you Miss Hermione. I know that this may be untoward and rather abrupt, but I hope this letter finds you well. I cannot claim much familiarity with you as we hardly interacted as children and yet we of this generation all have a shared past that makes such formalities feel slightly unnecessary. I digress because that is a topic for another occasion.
Now to my point: I have come into contact with a rare item. I have heard that your expertise would be of extreme use in deciphering the properties of said item. I am having tea in the garden this Sunday at midday. It would greatly please me to have your company and expert opinion on such a unique find. You, of course, would be well compensated for your time.
Etc etc,
Daphne Greengrass-Goyle."
Despite the rather abrupt tone and the large possibility that this "rare item" was nothing more than a muggle cassette tape (truly a relic these days), she was interested. The note had a red gummy substance on the bottom. She had only seen such a thing once before when she still worked in the ministry. She found it a mixture of arrogance and acceptance that Daphne had not bothered to explain what it meant to her in the note. Despite being muggle-born, Daphne knew that Hermione would understand its significance despite not knowing her at all.
Hermione felt soft fur pass over her bare feet and she started. The cat had brought her back to the current moment and she realized that she was only partly dressed for work. She finished up her morning procedures with heart beating faster than it had in awhile. She debated all day if she should tell her two best friends about the strange morning note.
She told them of course. They were her family now-all broken and busted up like all the other familial relations in the world. Harry, long past the point of surprise, was the first to suggest that perhaps she should go and see what all the fuss was about even if only for a chuckle. He'd known how monotonous life had been these past few years. The daily schedules and routines were relentless especially for him, young father, who no longer tangled with adventure and disaster.
Her other best friend was a different sort entirely. Ron had grown so distrustful of almost everyone from their previous life that he strictly forbade her acceptance. His face was deep red and he sputtered angrily that anyone could think this was a good idea (with a few curses peppered throughout to emphasize his disapproval.
Ginny gave him a strong look and he crumbled back into himself and murmured that "It'd be a shame to survive war only to be poisoned by a bloody Goyle". Ginny, incensed with pregnant fire, verbally fired back at him. His look of dejection as his sister scolded him like a mother made Hermione almost want to intervene. His vehement rejection of the note was the biggest spark she'd seen in him in years. She felt a burning grow inside herself- a moment of craggy hate for his sister who doused his fire. Hermione immediately burned up with self reproach. Ginny didn't deserve that anger.
She wrapped a pale arm around Ron's threadbare body and kissed the spot beneath his ear quickly, as she used to do. He smiled at her with a flickering of flame of roguishness and she felt intense relief. Their love story ended before it ever got off the ground but the deep affection would never evaporate. Harry and Ginny, with hope still deep in their hearts, smiled at each other as she and Ron openly embraced. They always did when they saw the small flint of fire between Ron and her. They'd never stop believing that the two of them could save each other. Hermione and Ron knew it simply wasn't true.
Ron walked her to the bus station after ending the evening with Harry and Ginny. They walked calmly together in the cool night. Ron complained lightly at the needlessness of walking when apparition was an option. "You're a witch!" he'd tell her as if she'd forgotten. She'd shrugged not being able to voice the need to be a normal girl walking home from a night out with friends. He never understood her need to pretend to be average.
They were walking through the square towards the bus line. It was a Thursday night and no one was around. She stopped walking abruptly and spun to kiss his neck again. He knew it was coming. It was always one of them who began this way. Right before reaching the statue in the center of the square, one of them would do it. She pressed her lips against his neck then nibbled. He bent down and ran a hand across her thin arms. They never kissed each others lips. They only nibbled at one another in an imitation of taking the other in. That was far as it ever went. This strange ritual of kissing and nibbling at necks and ears and throats. They dared each other to take it further- to hastily unzip each other but it never happened. It couldn't be done. As she said, their love story wasn't burning bright enough and never would.
The clinging and sighing stopped with both of them breathless and reluctant. They pulled apart like repelling magnets. They did not discuss it. They walked onward with wet necks and flushed cheeks and with a clammy warmth in their bones- just enough heat to be noticeable and make them shiver with the sudden coldness of the air.
I haven't done this in so long that I can't remember the process. Thanks for reading anyway. I also borrowed the initial premise from a lovely novel of the same name by Y. Choo. I am aware at how utterly unoriginal that is. Please forgive me. After writing a few chapters, I realized that my story has basically nothing to do with that story, but I do want to mention that my idea started out from that original premise.